Landscapes and Architecture Photography

Category Archives: Equipment

I recently started with aerial photography so I thought it would be a good idea to make a new gallery for those pictures. May I present you my first attempts at aerial photography, all done with a DJI Inspire 1 Pro.

Alps on FireToday I was very fortunate to be at the right spot at the right time, just as the fog rose to cloak the mountains, the sun - already on the horizon - gave it a bright red glow. It was just breathtaking to witness everything from above!

On Shore
This is an aerial impression from yesterdays outing to Eibsee at Zugspitze. Unfortunately the weather decided to cancel yesterdays' sunset and filled the whole area with fog and clouds only within a couple of minutes.

FrostedWhile looking for compelling aerial compositions I discovered a nice red-green colour contrast in a little forest close-by. The beautiful hoar frost we had this morning helped to emphasize the structure in the trees.

Finally my Sirui M-3204X (nowadays N-3204X) tripod has shown some wear and it was about time to get it repaired. Nothing actually broke, only the half shells – which are part of the sliding mechanism – in the upper segment were worn out and sliding out the segment was really hard or not possible at all. Sometimes the sement even came off, like shown in the picture on the right.

Actually I wanted to get it repaired already earlier but never was sure whether I would get it back in time for planned photography trips. After I returned from the Faroe Islands a bit more than a week ago I knew that I can spare the tripod for a while because no other photography trips were planned.

What can I say, I sent the tripod in for service and received it back within 4 days only! Fully repaired and covered by the warranty (which is 6 years) coming with a nice letter stating what has been exchanged and repaired. Wow, when I received it back I couldn’t believe that it took not even a week. I’m impressed Sirui! This makes me confident to keep recommending Sirui tripods to other people. The price / value ratio is amazing!

This was mainly meant for documentation purpose for myself, if anybody reads this and finds it helpful let me know, I’d be happy to hear about it 😉

My approach

On daytrips (e.g. hiking, visiting cities) I’m already using my trustworthy Lowepro 400AW, it’s big and sturdy enough for rough treatment. Recently there have been very exciting offerings by f-stop and MindShift (by Think Tank) which use a very similar concept of accessing your backpack from the back side while it is in front of yourself and not on the ground. I might look into those sometime later, however this blog post is dedicated to my approach for long distance trips or hikes with overnight stays.

Aspensport trekking backpack

Olympus E-System shoulder bag

I previously just combined what I had at my disposal, a cheap 70L trekking backpack by Aspensport and an Olympus E-System shoulder bag. I never even tried to fit my camera equipment directly into my trekking backpack, like putting it into a dedicated compartment with clothes for padding, I always liked the idea of having an ICU (internal camera unit) where I can arrange my camera gear properly, it’ll stay in place and it’s perfectly protected from outer impacts. So in this case I just used the shoulder bag as an ICU while keeping the shoulder strap attached, because I want to be able to just pull it out of the backpack and use the comfortable access to my equipment from the top while it hangs in front of me.

Recently both trekking backpack and camera shoulder bag became almost unusable because of some serious wear, I even stitched together seams which already disintegrated. Well, this was the motivation to look for new equipment for the job and hence this blog post, it was mainly meant for documentation purpose for myself 😉

Trekking backpacks

I considered the following requirements:

Around 70L of interior volume

Comfortable carry system which makes you carry most of the weight on the hips (my previous Aspensport trekking backpack was really bad at this!)

Many reasonably placed pockets to store different equipment, also wet pocket

Unfortunately I didn’t do much research on the trekking backpacks. I have known the fabulous f-stop mountain series (e.g. Sukha and Shinn) for quite a while now, but there is on thing which kept me from buying one: availability. Here in Germany a friend of mine had to wait almost 2 months to get one after ordering. Their ICU concept is very nice, however not flexible enough (yet) for me, I want an ICU which can be used as a proper shoulder bag too. This means I want to able to conveniently pull out and put back my camera while standing. I think by offering shoulder straps for their ICUs f-stop might be already on the way to offer something which would be perfect for me, I’m curious and will stay tuned with what they come up with in the future!

During my recent research the Deuter Aircontact Pro 70+15 was one of my first finds and immediately became my first choice, it ticked off all of those requirements, received good reviews and also I trust the good reputation of Deuter among alpinists and mountaineers as a very experienced company with high-quality equipment.

Shoulder bags

Now this was the main part of my research. There are so many shoulder bags on the market, it was really difficult to get a good overview in a short amount of time. For comparison:

bendable padding goes around lens compartments (left/right), camera can be put on top of lens compartments, has zipper access on both sides, this is all stuff I got used to with my previous Olympus E-system bag, I worked quite well in comparison to conventional shoulder bags

put my Olympus E-M1 crossways into the bag, with the lens facing downwards

bendable padding goes around lens compartments (left/right), camera can be put on top of lens compartments, has zipper access on both sides, this is all stuff I got used to with my previous Olympus E-system bag, it worked quite well in comparison to conventional shoulder bags

Related links

I previously selected the Lowepro Adventura 170 bag as the go-to shoulder bag, but once it arrived I noticed that I highly underestimated the depth / height of the bag, which was ridiculous for my needs, hence I sent it back.

Now I ordered the AmazonBasics DSLR bag (medium) bag because it is very close to my old one in terms of size and at the same time it is very inexpensive compared to the ThinkTank shoulder bag, which I also liked.

I guess I’ll keep updating this post and maybe I’ll post a picture later of how I arrange my gear in those bags.

During the past 2 days at work I had the pleasure to work with this beast to take some “product photos” of the things I’m working on. Wow, compared to my Olympus mirror-less camera this is a huge and heavy beast weighing almost 2kg together with the kit zoom lens. I haven’t been using DSLRs for almost 2,5 years now, basically since I sold all of my previous DSLR kit. For sure this thing here is build like a tank and robust as hell, that’s probably also the reason why we still have this old camera from 2005, but it’s so damn heavy if you’re not used to it anymore! At least the past 2 days reminded me why I don’t miss this ancient and heavy technology 😉

I’m also pretty sure this is one of those cameras which cause this peculiar disease called “DSL-ARM”, recently discovered by Olympus! Enjoy the video(s) at this website (side note: dont’ take it too serious ;))http://www.getolympus.com/dslarm

I finally made the decision to go mirrorless, now that this technology has been developing so fast and has arrived at a level where it can easily compete with classic DSLRs. It seems that this is the future technology, which pushes the limits even further. Because I was working with Olympus DSLRs, I decided to switch to their micro-fourthirds system, which keeps my costs of switching systems lower because I can still use my old lenses with an adapter and slowly exchange the heavy DSLR lenses by more compact and lightweight micro-fourthirds lenses (it’s really awesome how small and light these are!).
Here is the equipment I start with: Olympus OMD E-M1, 12-40mm f/2.8 kit lens, Panasonic 7-14mm f/4 wideangle zoom.

Olympus OMD E-M1 + 12-40 f/2.8 + 7-14 f/4

I’m thrilled because I can make use of my new camera equipment already during my next trip to the UAE (Dubai & Abu Dhabi) and Thailand starting next week. Feel free to recommend nice locations and activities for my Thailand stay

After all the tripod blues I finally bought a proper replacement of my old one. It was clear that only a carbon-fiber tripod can suit all my needs (very high, lightweight and small in pack size) as I wanted to finally go for a compromise between a sturdy tripod suitable for long-exposures and also a lightweight travel tripod with a small pack size to be able to carry it while being fixed to a backback.I checked out Manfrotto, Gitzo, Giotto, Feisol and Siuri and figured out that the latter one offers an interesting selection of tripods with a rather good price-value rate. So I finally it turned out that their M-3204X tripod suits my needs very well, moreover they also offer great ballheads which received only good reviews. As tripod head I chose the Sirui K-20x ballhead.
In total this makes a minimal pack size of 51cm, a weight of 2.1kg and a maximum height from ground to my camera viewfinder of 1.96m. With the possibility of turning the legs around 180° it’s possible to shoot photos as close to the ground as you wish.
It also includes retractable stainless steel spikes, which are not mandatory for example with Manfrotto.
Just look at the picture, it does the tripod justice, it’s just perfect for my height of 1.95m.
I’m happy now, let’s see how well the tripod does in the field 😉